So I am not sure how they work.

Say I want to throw a group of 4 storm trooper minions.

I believe I need 3 pips. Say I roll 1 white and 2 dark. How do I procede?

Well you need 1 force point to use the basic power. 1 Force point to use the strenght upgrade, the troopers are sil. 1, and you need at least 1 force point to use magnitude upgrade, (if you have enough, else you need to activate again), and another one if the troopers are beyond short range.

If you want to lift them, you need to spend a DP, take 1 strain per force point, so 2 strain, and 1 conflict per force point so 2 conflict. If you chose to do that, you now lift them troopers. (if you have all the needed upgrades)

I treat Minion groups as one target since that's how they are treated almost everywhere else in the rules.

I treat Minion groups as one target since that's how they are treated almost everywhere else in the rules.

I think that's the easiest call. The entire group gets tossed and only one application of damage.

Like a bunch of stooges.

Ummm not what I was asking. That part I get. I am talking about the fact I rolled 1 light and 2 dark pips. I know there is something about flipping destiny points and conflict and strain... That is the part I don't get.

Ummm not what I was asking. That part I get. I am talking about the fact I rolled 1 light and 2 dark pips. I know there is something about flipping destiny points and conflict and strain... That is the part I don't get.

Pretty much exactly like Poseur said, as a light-side user, you immediately have access to the 1 light side point. If you wanted to use dark side points, then you first flip a Destiny Point (light to dark), and then you take both Strain and Conflict equal to as many Dark Side points you are going to use. So to use the 2 dark side points, you flip a Destiny, and then take 2 Strain total and 2 Conflict total.

I treat Minion groups as one target since that's how they are treated almost everywhere else in the rules.

Would three Silhouette 1 minions in a group still be considered Silhouette 1? If not, how would you determine what their new Silhouette might be?

Would three Silhouette 1 minions in a group still be considered Silhouette 1? If not, how would you determine what their new Silhouette might be?

AoR's Squad Rules treats Squads/Squadrons as 1 silhouette higher than it's largest member. So a group of Humans are 1 sil. each, so they're sil. 2 total as a minion group/ squad. A group of starfighters are 3 sil. each, so they're sil. 4 total as a group/squadron.

Would three Silhouette 1 minions in a group still be considered Silhouette 1? If not, how would you determine what their new Silhouette might be?

A little common sense helps too. Conceptually, a squad (minion group) of 2 humans is hardly the size of a car, so I would say a pair of thugs is still sil 1. but that's just me, and as Lathrop pointed out, the rules exist.

It depends on the game style and theme you want to foster in your games, and how strong do you want characters to be.

Important point too: Lets say you have a group of four storm troopers. With only two force pips generated a player could move them and deal 20+ damage to that group, eliminating 3 of the four minions. That's fairly significant. so both ways have their strong suits (further example, a squad of ties thrusted against a capital ship would take 40 damage+ each. if memory serves, that would definitely be a noticeable hit, even if it's not a practical activity for a force user.

It depends on the game style and theme you want to foster in your games, and how strong do you want characters to be.

Yes, and this is far too generous for my taste. I treat minions as individuals on defense (most of the time), but just ganging-up (focusing fire) on offense to speed things along and pose more of a threat. If you wanna Move more than one minion at a time, you'll need to actually invest in the Magnitude upgrade.

I would definitely treat a squad/squadron different than a minion group. The whole point of them - for the most part - is to protect the PC or BBEG. Giving the player a way to skirt that safety net defeats the purpose.

I was once accused (by a forumite with no actual knowledge) of running an A-team game, where I would let my players build a tank out of a playground swing set. The suggestion was so funny to me that it became my signature to that forum for quite some time.

Truth is I let the players play at the level they want. within certain boundaries. A player of mine in a pathfinder game this last Friday tried to use fluff text in a spell to justify a non-rules use of a spell, and I was trying to explain that it simply didn't work that way. He gets frustrated with me because I do reign him in, I'm sure he thinks without good cause, but it's specifically because he likes to cherry pick his rules for the scenario, not for fairness.

I think the most important thing is to be consistent. and let the player feedback tell you if they are having fun or not.

RAW, Lorne is correct in that you'd need to use Magnitutde Upgrades in order to affect more than one minion in a group.

Although if you're just looking to do damage, simply hurl one minion of the group into another minion of the same group, and with the damage spillover you'd mechanically be taking out both those minions (each suffering 10+successes damage) and perhaps one or two more depending on the Soak Value and Wound Threshold of each individual minion. So against a minion group of 5 antiquated battle droids (Soak 4, WT 4), using Move + Control Upgrade: Hurl + Strength Upgrade (total of 2 Force points required) and three successes on the Discipline check (1 difficulty as the droids are Silhouette 1) to hurl Droid 1 into Droid 2 does 13 damage to both droids, only 5 of which is needed to exceed to their individual Wound Threshold and take them out, leaving 16 damage to be applied to the rest of the minion group, which given how damage works for minion groups would actually be enough to wipe out the entire group, since each increment of 5 damage in this case = 1 defeated battle droid.

Now that being said, the above is a bit on the complicated side, perhaps more so than some GMs want to deal with on a regular basis. So, if a GM wants to simplify matters for their games and simply treat the minion group as a single unit, then increasing the size by 1 regardless of how many minions are in the group is fine. Even if there's only two Silhouette 1 minions on the group, I'd say they should still be treated as being Silhouette 2 for purposes of affecting with Move, since by allowing the Forcer to target the entire group at once, you're effectively bypassing the Magnitude Upgrade and thus lowering the number of required Force points to achieve the desired effect by 1.

AoR's Squad Rules treats Squads/Squadrons as 1 silhouette higher than it's largest member. So a group of Humans are 1 sil. each, so they're sil. 2 total as a minion group/ squad. A group of starfighters are 3 sil. each, so they're sil. 4 total as a group/squadron.

RAW, Lorne is correct in that you'd need to use Magnitutde Upgrades in order to affect more than one minion in a group.